Some rambling thoughts on Psycho-Pass and its ending

April 10, 2013

Almost from the start Psycho-Pass was clearly a show where the ending
was pretty crucial and a bad ending would be a real problem for the show
as a whole. Did Psycho-Pass come through in the end? My view is yes,
although there are people who disagree. On the whole I consider the
last episode a good ending although not a great one; to put it one way
it was a well done and periodically exciting presentation of the last
act of a play that we had all seen coming. There were no big surprises,
no last minute shocks, simply well delivered story beats that we had
already been (mostly) expecting.

(I'm now about to get into spoiler territory.)

The surface story of Psycho-Pass is the hunt for Makishima; apart from
the first episode (which mostly serves as an introduction to the setting
and the characters) the entire storyline is driven by his actions and
revolves around them. But that's not really what the show's about and
I think that how people feel about the ending (and thus the show) will
depend on what they think the real story of Psycho-Pass is and that
in turn depends on one's view of Sibyl. One view is that Sibyl is an
inherently evil system and that the show should be about overthrowing
it; this makes the ending at least a depressing one since the system
survives and indeed co-opts Akane despite her knowing its terrible
secrets. But I don't feel that way about Sibyl.
Instead I've come around to seeing Psycho-Pass as fundamentally
Akane's character arc, the story of Akane really growing up, maturing,
and making her own decisions. This view makes the ending a powerful
conclusion to the series because we see Akane come full circle to be a
competent character and confident leader.

(I'll be honest; I'm biased towards this view partly because it makes
the ending make sense.)

Having said that I don't know what the show really feels about Sibyl
by the end. Is it evil but necessary? Flawed but necessary? There's
certainly a lot of argument (tacit and explicit) in the latter parts
of the show that Sibyl is now a necessity and society will fall apart
without it. Also, part of my confusion is that the show and I clearly
have rather different opinions on how horrifying the truth of Sibyl's
deep secret is.

(This is serious spoiler territory now; I'm about to be explicit.)

The show seems to think that Sibyl being a bunch of psychopath brains in
vats is both terribly horrifying and completely unacceptable to society,
since that's how every character who finds out reacts. I am evidently
much more cynical than the show because I don't think that people would
be particularly bothered if the PR spin was done right. Really, who
cares what's behind Sibyl if Sibyl works? If (psychopathic) criminals
are recycled to be Sibyl components instead of being killed out of hand,
well, so what. As I argued I don't think that
there's any evidence that the now-Sibyl-components are abusing their
nominal position to do evil things or enrich themselves. And the entire
running theme of the show is that people are perfectly happy (even
eager) to become sheep for Sibyl if it just takes care of things for
them.

(I was pleasantly surprised that the brains are smart enough to be
planning for revealing their secret over the long term. This may be
a sign that show subtly agrees with me or I may be reading the tea
leaves too deeply.)

Now I will be really contrarian. It's popular in the commentary I've
seen to decry Kougami's choice to shoot and kill Makishima as a great
failure that shows he's consumed by revenge. I disagree strongly; I
argue that in the end Kougami better upholds justice than Akane does.
To put it one way Kougami does by hand what the Dominators would do
if they worked properly.

Let us not forget that the Psycho-Pass world is one where sufficiently
dangerous criminals are executed out of hand by Dominators when
discovered. There is no trial, no appeal, no argument, and no one has
any qualms about it. Even Akane in the first episode is horrified only
by the grossness of the rapist's death, not by him being killed on
the spot. Makishima is clearly someone who would be executed by the
Dominators if they could read his psycho-pass correctly (for a start
he's directly murdered at least one person in cold blood). Further,
everyone in the team knows that the orders to bring Makishima in alive
at all costs are bogus. The orders aren't right and they aren't being
driven by justice, they are being driven by some political thing over
the team's heads. If the team went after Makishima with properly working
Dominators he would die on first contact, shot with Lethal Eliminator
mode.

(If the show is arguing that Kougami making a choice to kill Makishima
by hand is more morally wrong than simply firing a Dominator on cue,
knowing that it will kill someone, I disagree with it.)

I can't say that Akane's choice in the ending is either wrong or bad,
but I do think it's influenced by a desire for people she knows to
not get their hands dirty and other pragmatic considerations. My view
is that most of the evidence is that Akane would be perfectly fine
with Makishima being killed. It's also a convenient choice for the
story, since it sympathetically aligns her with most people's real world
morality in the same situation (of course it's right to bring Makishima
back alive for a 'proper trial').

Update: I wrote badly and confusingly here . I don't mean Akane's
decisions after Makishima's death but her choices before then to try to
bring Makishima in alive and to work to prevent Kougami from killing him.